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Thursday, May 18, 2017

A Delicate Balance: A Window to the Batanes Way of Life

The
popular images of Batanes are those of breathtaking verdant landscapes and blue
waters, alternately agitated and calm. These northernmost Philippine islands
have long been part of a traveler’s must-go-and-experience list. But Batanes is more than just a weekend
getaway.

“A Delicate Balance: Batanes Food,
Ecology and Community” reveals why. A project of The Museo ng Kaalamang Katutubo
(MusKKat), this handsome book explores how food, ecology, nature, and tradition,
have shaped the Ivatan way of life in the last 4,000 years. It also explains too that the Ivatan and the
Itbayat, people of the Batanes, knew well how to husband resources through aeons,
without depleting or otherwise compromising nature.

While
the authors, Corazon S. Alvina and Marian Pastor Roces, make sure to point out
that food habits are radically changing, particularly with thorough-going links
with the cash economy now in place, there remains more than enough facets of
the old nature-and-culture system to recognize its form and its reasons for
enduring.

Complemented
with insightful photographs by Neal Oshima, the book shows the intricate but
robust relationships within the communities of the Batanes, and how traditional
Ivatan and Itbayat food is interconnected with the islands’ microsystems. In one of the notes in the book, Roces writes
that while “A Delicate Balance: Batanes
Food, Ecology and Community” is a food book, it is not necessarily a food
book. Food is only an access point into the Batanes human-in-biosphere
ecosystem.

Officially
launched this November, the book is a result of the collaboration with, and the
consolidation of the substantive research work of, archaeologists,
anthropologists, boat makers, botanists, Ivatan experts and cooks, a
professional urban chef, nutritionists, geologists, sea current specialists, and
zoologists. “A Delicate Balance: Batanes Food, Ecology and Community” is
available for purchase and priced at P3,850 via www.phfoodecosystems.com.